First of all, I don't know why people are reviewing universities, but boy do I have a bone to pick with McGill.
I don't know if it was the strange combination of programs I picked (Linguistics/Women's Studies double major, with a minor of Sex Div) or just by virtue of being an arts student with a strongly radical political bent, or maybe even by being someone seen as a woman with a goofy haircut. All I know is that being at McGill is hell.
Don't let me dissuade you with just that: Montreal is great! Montreal is fantastic. It is a city very easy to survive in and rewards you for your survival with plenty of culture, lots of cool events, etc etc. But as soon as I walk onto McGill's campus my face falls. My stride becomes quicker. I shoulder past groups of engineering bros all wearing matching hoodies who are laughing and smiling because they know their programs will never have their funding cut.
Oh yeah! Funding gets cut. Funding gets cut in places that McGill cares least about, which- surprise!- is the entire arts department. Last year they cut over a hundred classes. This year, they'll most likely cut even more. All this despite pouring money into the medical school, purchasing the Royal Victoria Hospital, and refurbishing the facades of several buildings on-campus. This is made even more heinous by the fact that a) you can't drink the water in the linguistics building (apparently the pipes are bad), b) McGill adamantly refuses to make more of its buildings wheelchair-accessible, cutting off class access to disabled students, and c) they have frozen hiring positions citing "lack of funds".
Speaking of positions, though, most of the professors are great. There are a few profs who I personally can't stand, but I'd chalk that up 100% to personal feelings rather than inability to teach. Some of them work you hard, but I mean, isn't that what this school is known for? It's just that a lot of professors in the more neglected faculties (the IGSF, for instance) are taken for granted and treated much worse than, say, the staff in the medical school.
It's very obvious on campus who the golden students are, and that's the medical and life science folks. People wanting to get into bio courses and are not on track for premed often get shafted, unable to complete their degrees in time because the classes are overrun with premed students. This has been a problem for years, yet McGill refuses to make another class specifically for premeds.
This golden student culture extends all the way through the sciences- the science faculty is much more funded, has much more groundspace in the university, and dominates budget discourse due to their taking on of federal defense contracts, something I personally have a deep ideological distrust for.
As far as campus culture goes, there are a lot of beer-swilling bros and folks at Gerts, some good clubs, but not much else worth doing related to McGill. If you want culture, don't seek it here, unless you really want some conservative management-major 3rd years trying to hit on you incessantly throughout the night.
There are bright spots and some really great student orgs (CKUT, QPIRG, BSU, etc) but largely McGill's image is dominated by things like Red Thunder (a promoter of "sports games" but really just an excuse for people to get messy drunk in the stadium and puke in the stands), Frosh (Arts, Science, and Engineering Frosh are widely seen by Montreal's population as "annoying" and "an embarrassment" and "something to be stopped"), and the overwhelming intensity of the medical school being promoted.
I would not recommend anyone with any sort of a creative bent attend this school. There is no fine arts program (meaning there are literally no art classes, not even figure drawing) and the music program is so elite it's inaccessible for those who just want to study some entry level music theory. The creative writing program is trash as well. If you like these things, you'd be much better off going to Concordia, or anywhere else.
Don't give this school your money. read more